Abstract
Abstract We ask if school choice, through its effect on sorting across schools, affects high school graduates’ application decisions to higher education. We exploit a school choice reform that dramatically increased achievement sorting across secondary schools in the municipality of Stockholm, employing a before–after design with a control group of students in similar schools located outside this municipality. The reform had a close to zero mean effect on the propensity to apply for tertiary educational programs, but strongly affected the self-selection by achievement into the kinds of higher educational programs applied for. Low achievers increased their propensity to apply for the ‘low-status’ educational programs, on average destining them to less prestigious, less well-paid occupations, and high achievers increased their propensity to apply for ‘high-status’ educational programs, on average destining them to more prestigious, well-paid occupations. The results suggest that increased sorting across schools reinforces differences across schools and groups in ‘cultures of ambition’. Although these effects translate into relatively small increases in the gender gap, the immigration gap, and the parental education gap in educational choice, our results indicate that school choice, and the increased sorting it leads to, through conformity mechanisms in schools polarizes educational choices of students across achievement groups.
Highlights
Since the early 1990s, more than two-thirds of the OECD countries have increased school choice opportunities
Critics argue that school choice can exacerbate inequalities, as it increases the sorting of students across schools based on their socioeconomic background, their ethnicity, and their ability, and that the quality of schooling can become increasingly unequal across schools as a consequence (Musset, 2012)
We rigorously study the effects of achievement sorting on educational choices, using an admission reform that exogenously increased grade sorting, but had no or little effect on sorting by socioeconomic background and country of birth, allowing us to convincingly isolate the effect of achievement sorting on educational choices
Summary
Since the early 1990s, more than two-thirds of the OECD countries have increased school choice opportunities. These patterns suggest that the achievements and choices of peers have opposing effects on how students value their own achievements in the process whereby they decide on which educational program to apply for: you are discouraged by peers with high grades, but encouraged by peers making ambitious choices.
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